10 Homeschool Questions

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Welcome to the February 2010 edition of A Living Education E-zine!

I have recently had a few questions that I thought I would share with all of you. Perhaps you have struggled with these issues yourself? These were the 10 homeschooling questions I have been asked. I will share my replies with you for the first 5 this month and will do the next 5 in my next ezine.

1. Making up missed days?
2. I keep telling my toddler to be quiet and I feel guilty.
3. I don’t like arts and crafts, how can I teach them to my children?
4. How do you manage to do it all?
5. Your children really work without complaint?
6. Encouraging non-writers to write.
7. How to help children who are slow to read.
8. Help! About to start high school.
9. Social activities for teens.
10. I can’t do high school maths!

Making up missed days

Whether you are on a formal curriculum or perhaps you just use your own ideas, every mom at some time feels like she is behind or has missed a day here and there. If it is truly a day here and there the best thing is to absorb the “missed” items into the remaining part of the week or into the next.

If you have had an illness or a length of time that you have not been able to reach your targets, then you have two options:

1. Just pick up where you left off and keep moving forward until your school year is complete or
2. Assess what it is that you have missed and either leave it out or reschedule your work.

Some families have been known to play catch up on Saturdays but this has never been an option for us so we have chosen just do a little extra on days we can manage until we have completed our required subjects.

The issue of missed days seems to be more of a crisis in the high school years where our children are moving towards their end goal of school leaving, but if your family is still to young, be encouraged to not sweat it and plan feverishly to “make up”.

If missing days tends to be a pattern in your homeschool then you have other issues to deal with. This article may help you resolve some of those problems.

“Keep Quiet!”

Having a toddler in the homeschool is definitely a challenge. As moms we can sometimes become so focussed on teaching our older children that we look at our enthusiastic little ones as an interruption.

I have heard of many suggestions for coping with toddlers in the homeschool and have even given some of my own based on what worked for our family. However this question was dealing with something deeper which was an attitude of heart in both mom and older siblings to this little toddler who just did not seem to respect the older ones school times.

Advice to this parent was two fold: Firstly that she should continue to train her little guy to play quietly in the school room and to make sure that she had these sorts of activities out and ready for him to use while she was teaching her older children.

Secondly, she needed to adjust her expectations, her attitude and her way of interacting with her toddler. Unfortunately her older children had picked up her approach and were starting to see their younger brother as a nuisance.

A last note on this is that guilt is there to tell us that something is wrong. This feeling can do one of two things: it can spur you onto seeking a solution so that the behaviour is stopped (in this case the mom getting angry at normal toddler behaviour) or it can simmer away and make one get into a deeper and deeper situation ending in despair. Our Father God has a remedy for everything and guilt should always take you to Him for help and a solution.

I don’t like arts and crafts!

This comment made me smile as I don’t either! I find that setting up crafty things takes so much time, the craft is quickly done, then it’s cleaning up again and in a month (or less) time the craft that was so great is now ready for the trash can! Isn’t that a terrible description?

This being said, I was blessed with a wonderfully creative daughter who LOVES crafts and art. When I realized this I had two choices – pretend I did not notice her interest, or change my attitude.

When she was younger I made sure that we would do one craft a week irrespective of how I felt about craft, because I realized that one of the many reasons we have for homeschooling is encouraging our children talents and growing them in this area.

When she was older I just made sure that we had the right craft books and materials available in our art supply cupboard for her to pick and choose what she would like to do.

How do I do it all?

First I think it is important to blow a theory out of the water – I don’t manage to do it all. I often wonder what this “all” is that homeschool moms refer to...is it teaching, cooking, cleaning, gardening as well as sports for the children and fitness for me?

I do manage a lot and this I accredit to planning my days, weeks and seasons. But I know there are many things that I do not get to do. There are many more things that I wish I could do, but never get to.

So how do I balance my “all”? I prioritise and it looks something like this:

Walking in relationship with my Lord Jesus
Spending time with my husband and family
Homeschooling my children
Caring for our home
Servicing my business
Growing our vegetables
And then all other things.

Anything that is not in the top 6 categories becomes “other things” and these fit into days, weeks or non schooling times so that they can get done. I do not fret and panic over “other things” as I know in due time I will get to them. I also live in my seasons of parenting. While I had young children, many more things were on hold until I had more time.

I can’t believe that your children work without complaint!

A mom was astonished the other day when I mentioned that my children will work with me for 3 hours over the weekend in the garden and home. It made me wonder why we had achieved this one thing and how we had done it. Here are some of the things we did to get our children to work happily and willingly in the home and garden which automatically spilled into their desk time disciplines.

I know the format of this ezine is a little different but I do hope that it may have answered some of your questions, if not them please remember that all my previous ezines (4 yrs worth) are back issued here or as individual themed pages here.

The next 5 answers will follow in March.

Take care until next time,
God’s richest blessings to you as you homeschool,
Wendy

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